Fiction and Non-Fiction

Month: November 2024

Heinlein’s Second Rule

Robert Heinlein wrote his five rules of writing in an article back in 1947.

  • You must write
  • You must finish what you write
  • Refrain from rewriting
  • Put your story on the market
  • Keep it on the market until it sells

Individually, they sound simple. Following them all and consistently is the challenge. There are many reasons, or excuses, for not finishing a story. The main one is when your own head gets in the way, and that happened to me this past week, although if I’m honest, it’s been building for two or three weeks.

Earlier this month, I published a novella and put a banner on the cover that said Book One of the trilogy. Stupid of me because that made book two Important, and I have struggled with the story ever since. And let’s not even talk about book three!

Except book two isn’t really important. It’s just another story, and if I’m following Heinlein’s Rules, I have to finish the story.

Well yes, but maybe not finish today or this week. I came across a technique I’m setting up that should help with this. The technique is to go on to a new project. Something that’s exciting and I want to write (plenty of those running around my head), and spend maybe eighty percent of my writing time on that new project. The other twenty percent goes to book two.

Maybe it’s only fifty or a hundred words that get written each day on book two. Maybe it’s a thousand. Either way I’m making progress and whether it’s December or next March, I’ve made the commitment to my creative voice that I will finish the story.

Now I can let creative voice go and play and know I’m keeping to Heinlein’s second rule.

A Quiet Week

If you’re anywhere near Auburn, Alabama you may have heard about the destruction of the eagles nest by a housing developer. The situation is now under official investigation by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Apart from that it was a fairly quiet week. I did get The Head of the Serpent published but didn’t make much progress on the sequel. I expect this week to be better.

A Milestone Reached

This past week, I reached the milestone of having written over a million words of publishable fiction.

I remember when I first began tracking my word count how one manuscript page – about 250 words – seemed a huge hurdle to reach every day. Now I’ve developed the writing muscle, and it doesn’t seem such a challenge.

At first glance, a million words sounds a lot, but I wrote those words over a six year period. I have a long way to go to emulate writers like John D MacDonald or Dean Wesley Smith for whom a million words is the annual target.

Just to help with the math on this, a million words a year is an average of about 2,750 words a day. I don’t think I’ll manage the next million words by the end of 2025. In the same way you don’t leave your doorstep and run a full marathon without preparation and training, making that leap to a million words a year requires similar planning and preparation. Not least in the planning is what to do with those ten to twenty books you write in that year!

As I said, I don’t think 2025 will be a million word year, but I should certainly be able to write the next million words in less than six years.

It’s Important

I’m sure I’m like most of you. I’m done with the US Election. We’ve had months, although it seems like years, of nothing but personal and negative attacks from both sides whenever you turn on the television, or look at any media. I don’t live in a swing state and I can only imagine how much worse it is there.

As I write this, tomorrow is election day. I’m no clearer in my mind on which of the major candidates to vote for. I’m not a one-issue voter, and it might be easier if I were. Both have some good policy ideas. Both are deficient in areas I consider important.

I did consider not voting this year, but to paraphrase my father. If you don’t vote, you can’t complain about the result. And I do like to complain about our politicians and Government!

Regardless of who you support, or regard as the lesser of several evils, please make sure to go out and vote tomorrow.

© 2025 Richard Freeborn

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